Member Avatar for Ameritrash73

I have XP and this problem exists on only one user. The others are normal. The wallpaper is the standard blue and when I select any other wallpaper, nothing happens. Text and icon size and other prefs have been altered and also cannot be changed. Also I am unable to download anything as that user and everything drags. I have run Norton Anti-virus and Win-doctor, Adaware, and Spybot, but only on other user log-ins because under the affected log-in, these programs just freeze up if I try to run them. It seems really odd to me that the problems are so isolated to the one user. The only changes that I can think of that happened before the problem were some worthless Windows updates, but they were performed under a different log-in so that seems unlikely to be the culprit but considering all of the Windows update problems I've heard about, nothing would suprise me.
Here are my specs:
Windpws XP sp2
NVIDIA GeForce FX5700 LE
Athelon 2800XP
1.5 gig mem

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Dani AI

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Short summary and quick plan tied to the thread: suggested a System Restore (good first idea when available). Because that wasn't an option for , the fastest way to diagnose is to treat this as a per‑user problem (either a corrupted user hive, a local policy/registry lock, or user‑scoped malware). The recommended sequence is: test with a fresh admin account, scan/clean from outside the affected profile, inspect local user policies/auto-start entries, then rebuild the profile if the problem persists.

Practical steps (in order)

  1. Create a new local administrator account and log into it. If the new account behaves normally, the issue is confined to the affected profile.
  2. From the clean admin account, run up‑to‑date scanners from Safe Mode or use a bootable rescue scanner so the suspect user hive is not active. Offline scans avoid infections that block tools while that user is logged on.
  3. If malware isn't found, inspect user‑scoped settings: run gpedit.msc (Local Computer Policy) to check personalization/desktop policies and use Autoruns or Process Explorer from the clean account to find suspicious per‑user startup entries. For deeper checks, load the affected user hive in regedit (File → Load Hive) and review HKU\<user>\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and Policies keys — always export a backup before editing.
  4. If cleaning and policy changes don't help, create a new permanent user and migrate only personal data (Desktop, My Documents, Favorites, email data). Do not copy the user’s NTUSER.DAT or hidden profile registry files; copying those can carry the problem into the new account. After confirming the new account works, remove the old profile via System Properties → Advanced → User Profiles.

Cautions: back up all user data before edits, and avoid copying whole profile hives. If removing the old profile or editing the registry feels risky, use the fresh account and file‑level migration—rebuilding the profile is the safest long‑term fix.

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Member Avatar for chase247

All right its simple your problems seems to be after the update so just perform a system restore to an earlier point where it was working fine..

Member Avatar for Ameritrash73

System restore was turned off at the time so there are no restore points.

Member Avatar for Ameritrash73

Also, the homepage on that user was changed to MSN and won't let me change it. That makes it even more likely to be a Microsoft update issue I suppose.

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